


handcuffs and cheese

by Luthor



Category: Dragon Age II
Genre: F/F, self-indulgent pirate stuff, what more do you want from me
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-07-18
Updated: 2015-08-16
Packaged: 2018-04-09 21:27:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 3,070
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4364792
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Luthor/pseuds/Luthor
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>(Little inevitabilities that Hawke has accepted and Isabela will never: they will always meet again; there will always be bodies at their feet.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Fools Rush In

**Author's Note:**

> Title courtesy of Tim Minchin (salutes). 
> 
> This game has chewed me up and spat me out as a lump of even greater pirate!trash than I was before. Consider this a drabble of sorts, if you like, set some time after the quest 'Fools Rush In' has been completed. I've been wanting to write a larger fic for these two for a while, but uni kicked my arse and I haven't written a lot of just about anything in a long time, so I thought, hey, start small.

They meet again – it’s everything you’d expect, moonlight and stars and the sound of a whore earning her money in an alley not too far away. It was never going to be candlelight and fine wine (whatever nug piss passes for ale at The Hanged Man, perhaps, and no one’s ruling out fire altogether).

Isabela arrives too late to witness the skull that Hawke unsheathes her dagger from. She catches a torn bandana being produced like a handkerchief and makes enough noise for Hawke to catch her eye as she steps out of the darkness. Pale fingers still, a drop of blood slips off the blade’s tip and lands in several smaller spots at Hawke’s booted feet, mixing with the Lowtown dust. The wind covers Isabela’s face in her own dark hair, and she raises a bangled arm to brush it back. Hawke watches this, then turns the dagger over in her hand and runs each edge precisely against the handkerchief until it’s clean.

Isabela takes in the bodies without interest, clicks her tongue at the mess. Her eyes land on the belt of the one closest to her, head tipping to one side, lips pursing. They haven’t even been looted yet. Her eyes cut back to Hawke’s, and suddenly a smirk, suddenly a twisting in Hawke’s stomach that isn’t altogether down to the way that the moonlight bounces back from Isabela’s chest. _Amateur_.

“I knew you’d be trouble,” Isabela hums.

Hawke turns the dagger over in her hands again and smiles without confidence.

“I knew you’d be back.”

She stretches a sinewy arm back behind her head, her slim muscles bulging like they rarely have the chance to, and slips the dagger home. Isabela appreciates the gesture. She steps forward, toes at the leg of one of the fallen, and tips her head towards Hawke as though to say, _how’s business?_

(Hawke grins and grins and Isabela already hears the _can’t complain_ that isn’t said.)

“You’re out late,” Hawke says, tucking the soiled handkerchief away. “And barely swaying – Isabela, I’m concerned! Is The Hanged Man still standing?”

“You have a smart mouth, sweet thing, but it’s hardly your greatest asset.”

“You wound me.”

“No,” Isabela grins, knife-edge sharp. “You’d enjoy it too much.”

Hawke laughs, sharp as splitting wood, but her eyes are blue like the sea at first light and Isabela finds herself staring for too long, welcoming the water in. That’s the problem with Hawke; she’s greedy like the ocean, unapologetically needy. That Isabela recognises this and still lets herself get so close, like jumping overboard with a cannon strapped around her ankles, says a lot of something that Isabela isn’t going to listen to.

“Perhaps,” Hawke agrees, and assesses Isabela so deliberately that no matter how slow it is, how long her eyes linger, Isabela can’t compare her to the kind of lecherous drunk it takes a special part of Kirkwall to churn out. “Perhaps I’d be doing you a favour, giving you such… ample opportunity.”  She’s all seriousness, suddenly, and then Isabela blinks and it is gone. She looks away. “Do you know a good place to dump a body?”

“How so--?” Because maybe Isabela just can’t help herself; she likes to know what trouble she’s getting herself into, even as she’s hurtling straight for it (where's the fun in falling if you keep your eyes closed the entire time?). “Are you going to be a problem for me, Hawke?”

“I don’t know, am I?” Hawke’s eyebrows lift with feigned ease; she steps past the bodies as though she intends to leave them there, and she probably does. “Do we want the same things, Isabela?”

“That mouth, again,” Isabela tsks. “I can think of much better uses.”

Hawke’s smirk is slow and easy, her head dipping forward until her eyes are shadowed in dark hair. She flicks it away again, snaps her neck like she’s just knocked back a glass of something cheap and lethal, and meets Isabela’s gaze without a barrier between them. It's a bright look, a sharp look; if Isabela wasn't so accustomed to staring at shining things in dark skies, she might have just looked away.

“One day,” Hawke promises, like a warning (and maybe it is one, maybe Isabela should take her seriously, but she's  _not listening_ ), “one day I’ll take you up on that offer.”

“Oh, sweet thing,” she grins, instead, and her boots are cannon-ball-heavy, “I’m counting on it.”


	2. Finders Keepers

It’s back to The Hanged Man for celebrations (this is _Kirkwall_ , they don’t need a reason).

Martin watches their party from the opposite end of the bar, but Hawke’s purse is four shiny gold coins heavier and it’s easy to grin and wink and, “next ‘round’s on me,” until he spits tobacco out near his feet and tips himself out of his barstool. Beside her, someone warm and liquid-smooth pours themselves into the seat to her right.

“I underestimated you,” Isabela says, all smirk and sweat and sea salt. She drapes one arm over Hawke’s shoulders and pulls her in, ear to mouth; Hawke’s entire body is still trembling with adrenaline from the fight. “You have quick hands, Ferelden.”

“And I know how to use them, Rivaini.”

“Your Big Girl isn’t happy with you.” Isabela is slow in stealing the cup from out of her hands, and Hawke slips the ring from her pinkie finger in retaliation. Isabela glares at the pinch. “And you were doing so well…”

“Hmph,” Hawke hums, pushing the ring onto her own little finger, “I do my best to be an upstanding citizen.”

Isabela snorts and Hawke cracks a grin.

“But with the examples that are being set for me…”

“You know how to follow?”

“Meta _phor_ ically,” Hawke corrects, barks, “with them doing such a fine job of… oh, where’s Anders? He’d put this much more cleverly than I can…” Isabela frowns over a large sip of ale, or whatever passes for it. “My point being, this is Kirkwall.” She smacks a fist on the bar to make her point and Isabela almost inhales her next sip. “Even the roses smell like ogre shit.”

“And that’s why we love it!”

She holds Hawke’s cup up in toast, and Hawke rescues it from the air.

“Damned right.” She takes a sip. “Still…”

Isabela’s eyes narrow. The coal around them has smudged, or else that was the intended effect, and Hawke is willing to believe it when the black of her eyelids turns her irises lamplight gold – buried treasure yellow. A cat in the dark. She tightens that fist again until the pinch of Isabela’s ring has her little finger bulging beneath the knuckle. Isabela gives her a look – _this is boring, don’t be boring_ – and Hawke wants to duck her head, but that just makes her more determined to face Isabela’s gaze head-on.

“The amount of poison Martin now has on his hands…”

“He’s a _legitimate_ merchant now,” Isabela says, smirking like she’s not even trying to convince Hawke, “you heard him.”

Hawke rolls her eyes.

“You’re terrible – I’m terrible. We’re terrible people.”

“Mm,” Isabela agrees, “absolute shits, the both of us.”

“And our purses heavier for it…”

Blue eyes slip around to brown, a held breath, and they release matching cackles.

When they have quieted again, Hawke pushes her empty cup along the bar, this way and that between her hands. The light catches the ring on her little finger and makes it shine. There’s a crest there that Hawke doesn’t recognise; she doubts Isabela knows it, either. When she looks up again, Isabela is heavy-lidded and smiling.

“You’re a piece of work,” she says, and hates how fondly it comes out. Hawke just dips her head and snorts.

“Well,” she says, tilting her head, “there is, I hear, something to be said for being _up_ , _standing_ in Kirkwall.”

Isabela’s laughter peels through the room.

“Oh, dear heart,” and she unwinds her arm from Hawke’s shoulders, “the tricks I could teach you…” 


	3. The Deep Roads

The night before the Deep Roads expedition, Hawke finds Isabela at the docks.

It is late and past dark, and Hawke has accepted that this is how she will always find Isabela, between twilight and the dawn. She imagines her here often, mooning over ships, tossing coins to the beggar children who scurry on hands and feet up and down the chalky steps. In these visions, there is a wind about Isabela that presses the white of her shirt to thick, round thighs, and then peels it away again. Shamelessly, Hawke is disappointed when this is not the case tonight.

Isabela is a silhouette at the end of a pier, and Hawke walks to her as she walks into most bad ideas – with a smile on her face.

“Shouldn’t you be preparing?” Isabela calls ahead of her, and then turns with a smile that steals away Hawke’s disappointment at her failed ambush. “Writing letters – a final family meal?”

“You’re not good with farewells, are you?”

Isabela shrugs. “I don’t stick around long enough to give them.”

Hawke stops at the end of the pier, a barrel and some empty crates between them. She stares out at the ocean and tries to find the appeal there, but all that stares back at her is dark and empty, and she shivers and looks away. Looks, instead, at Isabela. In what little light the Kirkwall lanterns offer, Isabela could be warm and rich, but she holds herself in a shadow. She does not meet Hawke’s eyes.

“You think we’re going to our doom, don’t you?” It’s said with that signature Hawke smirk; Isabela doesn’t have to see it to taste it. “Oh, ‘Bela, I didn’t know you _cared_.”

Isabela does look at her, then.

“You’re walking willingly into darkspawn territory.”

“You’re right,” Hawke says, and there’s a look in her eyes that is far too knowing, like the edge of a dagger against Isabela’s throat, “who would walk _willingly_ into such heavily guarded territory and steal all of their precious relics?”

It’s evasive enough for Isabela to ignore it, for now. Before she can take her next breath, Hawke’s expression changes, turns pleading. Her smirk returns, and Isabela takes that breath a little easier for it.

“Come on,” she says, “think of what we can find down there.”

“I’ll take my chances up here, thank you.”

Isabela tips her head back to see the stars, but the night is dense and overcast, and she sways backwards on the heels of her feet, unsteady. Hawke uses the distraction to move in closer; it’s a familiar tactic, one Isabela doesn’t often have time to appreciate while they’re caught in an ambush, too busy laughing and dancing her way through a slaughter, but Hawke’s always been good at ghosting her way into places that she hasn’t any right to enter.

Hawke’s breath tickles her cheek, warm like an Antivan wind, and Isabela could turn her head now and kiss her or hit her, she’s fairly certain either one would draw the same reaction. Instead, she just smirks.

Kirkwall has been boasting an impressive summer so far, and it shows clearly on Hawke’s face. Her pale skin is mapped with freckles, constellations browned across her nose that Isabela dare not look at for too long.  Half of her is too afraid to discover where this careless thing between them leads, and half of her doesn’t want to spoil the surprise.

“I can’t tempt you into joining us?”

Hawke tips her body into Isabela’s, warm and firm, and smirks until it’s all that Isabela can look at. Isabela is the first to step away; slowly, like she thinks Hawke might fall without her support. She blinks her eyes and shakes her head, and stares plainly at Hawke until she can find her smile again.

“Not for anything.”

Hawke’s act of disappointment does nothing to hide the emotion behind it. She tips her head, _what are you gonna do?_ and shrugs like her throat is not four fingers and a thumb tighter than before. Her booted feet take her back three antsy steps, but her footfalls sound hollow on the pier; she’s overwhelmed suddenly by the need for dry land.

“Then I shall see you upon my return,” she says, feigned formality (she’s been practicing). Isabela watches her leave without surprise.

When she reaches the end of the pier, Hawke stops and turns back. She’s almost surprised to find Isabela still watching her; she grins like she’s been caught.  “I’ll bring you something nice back!” she shouts, even lifts a hand in a lazy wave, and carries on.

“Just get back here, alive,” Isabela yells after her, “only a fool would ask for more.”

Hawke turns once more before she’s out of sight and grins with all of her teeth. (It’s the last time Isabela will see that smile for months.

(She will miss it.)


	4. Questioning Beliefs

Isabela is waiting for her when Hawke sways into The Hanged Man.

Hawke will never have Merrill’s grace, but there’s something about her quick footwork that Isabela can’t help but compare to their elven friend. Even still, any elegance that comes from Hawke is an accident. As soon as she clears the first table, she’s elbowing a pint out of a sailor’s hand and dancing away from his temper with little else in terms of an apology bar a pat on the shoulder. Isabela is familiar with the move; there’s an art to pickpocketing and Hawke, so help them all, is a master of distraction.

Isabela squints at her, however, as she nears the table – empty handed.

“Hightown has ruined you,” she grunts.

“A pleasure to see you, too.” Hawke lands heavily on the stool opposite her, grasps the edge of it between her legs. It makes a scraping noise that rivals the volume of drunken laughter when she tucks it in closer to the table. “I’ve been thinking. Is that empty?”

Isabela takes the bottle on the table by the neck and gives it a shake. It flickers wherever the candlelight touches it, turns from seaweed to beetle green, then back again. Inside, something red and disappointingly warm sloshes up the sides. Hawke grins in response and Isabela pours her a glass.

The first sip is honey sweet. Hawke grimaces as though she has any idea what is wrong with it past her bitter palette.

“You’ve been thinking?” Isabela prompts. She takes a drink straight from the bottle.

“Yes.”

“…about?”

“Right.” Hawke lowers her glass to the table. She takes up the deck of cards, instead. “Who, exactly, have you upset this time?” She deals the cards, one for Isabela and then one for herself, quickly enough to distract Isabela from little more than a confused frown. “A rich lord, perhaps? No – somebody in the Chantry? Isabela, we’ve had words about looting the sisters’ pantaloons…”

Isabela narrows her eyes; if it’s a game Hawke wants, it’s a game she’ll have. She takes her unfinished deck into her hands and shuffles the cards into some semblance of order.

“Try to deny it, sweet thing, but the thought of me getting away with the Chantry sisters’ pantaloons keeps you warm in these cold, winter nights…”

Hawke’s fingers still, mid-deal. Isabela’s eyes flicker up to hers.

“That was rather tawdry, wasn’t it?” she asks, and Hawke lets out a belly-deep laugh. “Not that you’re denying anything, I see.”

Hawke shrugs. “I have no shame.”

“What is this about, anyway? Aside from your filthy curiosities.”

“Oh, you know,” she finishes dealing and scrapes up her hand of cards, “I was simply wondering why you’ve yet to pay me a visit. We're friends, you see, and so there must be some very important reason for why you're avoiding me.”

It’s said airily enough that Isabela might have missed the hurt lingering just behind it. She wraps both hands around her cards and narrows her eyes at Hawke, willing the emotion away.

“It’s not like I never see you,” she says, and it’s true. “I’ve saved your backside more times in this last week than I care to remember.”

“I only let you save me so that you can brag about it later,” Hawke pouts. “Besides, it is a rather nice backside.”

“Agreed, but not the point I’m trying to make.” She leans forward in her chair, planting both elbows firmly on the table. “You know, you’ve never actually invited me to see your new home.” She pushes at the top card in her hand, working it away from the pile. “And here I was, looking forward to the grand tour…”

“I’ve invited nobody – formally. _They_ just show up. It’s what friends do.” She drops her own cards, folding her arms on top of the table, meeting Isabela stance-for-stance. “Merrill even brought pie.”

“Of course she did,” Isabela grins.

“So,” Hawke starts, her lips bulging slightly as she tongues at her two front teeth, “will you come? I mean – tonight?”  

It’s said so earnestly that Isabela cackles – _cackles_.

“ _Oho_ , I haven’t had nearly enough to drink for this.”

Whatever offense Hawke was carrying on her face for _that_ shifts quickly when Isabela lifts a hand in the air, twists her fingers, and places an order for another bottle of wine.

 

 

“You’re alright, you know?” Isabela says, later. An abandoned game of Wicked Grace covers the table. No less than three cards have become stand-in place mats.

Hawke huffs but is too far gone to hide her smile. “Just alright?” Her lips peel back to reveal a crass grin – a drunken grin. It’s the first Isabela has seen of that smile in a long time. She thinks, perhaps, that is why she indulges in Hawke. (She thinks, _perhaps not_.)

“You don’t… judge people.” Hawke snorts. Isabela kicks her beneath the table. “You’re a pain in the arse.”

“But one you enjoy.”

“Oh, without question.” She takes a sip of her drink, then thinks better of it and lowers her glass – plants it firmly near the edge of the table, almost out of arms’ reach. She will sleep tonight; one look at Hawke tells her the same. “Think you can get home alright?”

Hawke snorts again. “The room’s barely swaying.”

“I worry more about the fright your poor mother will have when she finds you in bed with one of Kirkwall’s finest crusty louts.”

“Isabela,” Hawke gasps, touches a hand to her chest, “you weren’t going to take me to dinner first?”


End file.
